Is it a sex blog? A mommy blog? A bitch & moan blog? Um, . . . yeah. This is my place to be totally honest. In my real life, I feel like I'm always lying to somebody about something. Here, I am totally honest. Brutally so. However, no matter what bad things I say about my kids, I adore them and would never ever really, say, sell them on Ebay. The husband, often referred to as Spousehole, is another story. Oh yeah - if you are under 18 (or if you are my husband), please leave now.

Tuesday, November 20, 2007

Diabetes and Thanksgiving and a Recipe!!

In the United States, November is American Diabetes Month aka National Diabetes Month or National Diabetes Awareness Month. November is also when we celebrate Thanksgiving in the U.S. Kind of incongruous, to focus on diabetes in a month when many of us throw caution to the wind for a one-day binge of excess eating. Or more than one day, in my case, because the leftovers are so damn good. The only thing better than stuffing with gravy on Thanksgiving Day is stuffing with gravy on the day after Thanksgiving. Yummmmmmm.

I have been diabetic for over 30 years. It's just part of who I am, so much so that I hardly think about it sometimes. It just is. I watch my carb intake, but not super-closely. I try to eat right most of the time, with occasional splurges on pie or cheesecake. My A1Cs have never, ever exceeded 7.0, so my doctor feels I am doing a good job. My insulin needs have increased, however, even though my weight and carb intake have been fairly steady. My doctor thinks I am experiencing insulin resistance, which is generally associated with Type II diabetes (which runs in my family also). Apparently, you can have kind of a hybrid diabetes. I mean, a Type I is always a Type I, short of islet transplantation so that one's own body will produce insulin itself. But you can have Type II insulin resistance on top of that, where your body resists the effects of insulin, natural or synthetic. Interesting. Of course the way to fight that is losing weight, watching my diet, and exercising more. Yippee!

Our Thanksgiving will be pretty traditional. While the turkey cooks, we'll nibble on cheese and fruit, including pickled watermelon rind - a family tradition. We usually have a baked round of brie and an assortment of hard cheeses. There will also be crudite - carrots, celery, green onions. The main meal will consist of a whole turkey, sage stuffing cooked in the bird and sage stuffing cooked outside the bird, mashed potatoes, homemade gravy using pan drippings and stock made from cooking the giblets (but we don't actually eat the giblets), shoepeg corn, green beans, sweet potatoes, crescent rolls and yeast rolls served with cranberry butter, cranberry relish, and whatever else Mom makes or my sister and I show up with. Dessert is pie, of course, pumpkin, lemon meringue, and a pie to be named later (often rhubarb, pumpkin/pecan, or mincemeat). I make all the pies. Homemade crust, homemade filling. Everything we have is homemade. No store-bought gravy or Stove-Top stuffing, no canned cranberry sauce, nada. Well, the crescent rolls are Pillsbury - we cheat there. But the hot yeast rolls are homemade.

The wine choice is always complicated for Thanksgiving. So many people think a white should be served because the main dish is poultry. But because of the intense savory flavors of the day, a red is really more appropriate. I like a Shiraz/Syrah, myself. My mother is inclined to serve a Pinot Noir. We'll see. And we always serve a white for the Philistines too, usually an inoffensive Chardonnay. And we always have sparkling white grape juice for the kids. They like that.

Bunny's Cranberry Butter

3/4 cup fresh cranberries, rinsed and dried
6 T powdered sugar
1T freshly grated orange or lemon peel
1 cup unsalted butter (2 sticks)

Process cranberries, powdered sugar and citrus peel in food processor until coarsely chopped. Cut butter into smaller pieces and place in food processor. Process until combined.

Serve with hot rolls or . . .

Place 1 tsp cranberry butter in center of an unrolled, unbaked Pillsbury crescent roll (the kind that comes in a tube). Roll as usual. Repeat until entire canister of crescent rolls is rolled. Bake as per package directions. YUM!! These are good cold too.

What are y'all having?

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

Never heared about cranberries butter... sounds good...;-)

sandy shoes said...

Yum, all of it.

What is shoepeg corn?

sandy shoes said...

Whoops, clicked "publish" before I was ready.

We do mostly homemade stuff (I'm the pie person for us, too), with concessions made for Pepperidge Farm stuffing and (I know, I know...) cranberry jelly. This is partly because my mother never made anything homemade so it's what we grew up with, and partly because I strangely like the stuff.

I'd definitely go with a red, probably the Pinot over the Shiraz, but Merlot's my fave.

The Creeper said...

Sounds delish. Frankly, I'm not sure what we are having. I'll be blogging about it tomorrow after the conversation I had with my mother. Oy! Family drama!

h said...

Sounds nice. Perhaps too many starch items, but what the heck. You're correct on the Red being appropo.

I've given up on the idea of making a cohesive One-Troll-In-Charge Thanksgiving Dinner for my clan.


So, we're clubbing it this year to avoid the bloody brawls we've experienced the last 10 Thanksgivings.

My BEST Thanksgiving Dinner was a "just-the-two-of-us" reasonably precise recreation of what the pilgrims actually ate.

Trueself said...

Well, since we'll be at my parents' house you can count on the following menu:
Roast turkey, bread stuffing and cornbread stuffing, sweet potatoes, jellied cranberry sauce right out of the can, green bean casserole, dinner rolls (store bought and warmed up) and probably corn. For dessert we're having pumpkin pie and apple pie. I offered to bring pie but was, as usual, turned down. Turns out Mom is buying pies this year instead of making them. Hmpf, she coulda paid me if she wanted to for making them. {rolls eyes} I know she means well and is just trying to make things easier on everyone. However, one would think that since she knows I love to bake she could let me bring pies for Thanksgiving. Sigh. . . Sorry, didn't mean to rain on your blog here. Or rant either.

Vixen said...

And you COOK too???? It's official...Spousehole is an ass. *sigh* Your Thanksgiving sounds yummy. :)

Anonymous said...

Have you ever thought about finely chopping the neck and giblet meat and putting it in the stuffing? Divine!! Seeing as it's just me, myself and I, it's a small turkey, stuffing, a little sweet potato, a bun or two and some whipped cream fruit salad. It'll be more than enough. Hope it's relatively uneventful!!

Anonymous said...

National Month has been quite eventful for us. We helped out withthe third annual Rip's BAD Ride Arizona (Bikers against Diabetes) and raised almost $150,000 for the American Diabetes Association.

We also had a Diabetic Recipes Carnival of the Recipes that we held at the Diabetic Recipes Weblog a couple of weeks ago (November 3.) Thanksgiving Leftovers Recipes this week at Carnival of the Recipes and next week is Countdown to Christmas at the Christmas Recipes Blog.